TRACK 4

L’Esperance

As soon as the ATR 42 lifts us out of that tiny provincial airport—somehow suspended in a timeless capsule of perpetual romance—your tearful eyes well up.

“Surely Guadeloupe can’t be that bad.”

Your gaze soars the skies inattentively, as the Caribbean becomes an indistinct mass of water, no different than the Aegean, the Adriatic or maybe even the Pacific.

“Trouble: can’t live with it, can’t live without it!”

The liquid generated by your lacrimal glands travels through your respiratory tract, swamps your nostrils, prompts a snort, runs down your throat, saturates your taste buds and dampens the tissue that dries the rings under your eyes.

“Sorry, it’s just that you look like you could use a joke.”

Earplugs erect a fortress around you and all of a sudden I’m alerted to an entirely new meaning to the word isolation. I have a feeling nothing could be less important right now than the type of music blasting in your ears.

“Is Pointe-a-Pitre really so horrible?”

The journey today is particularly short—tailwind, someone explains. As soon as we pierce the thin coat of clouds I spot the turquoise outline of the cays around Terre Haute and I realise that I’ll never muster the courage to voice any of these lines to the weeping beauty by my side.

Want more? Go straight to TRACK 1, TRACK 2, and TRACK 3, or go back to B-SIDES, explore the potential COVERS of the book, or discover the PLAYLIST.